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Peter Cook is a blend of scientist, business consultant, political pundit, author, and musician.We discuss everything from the Academy of Rock to the woes of Brexit. Along the way, there is some good advice on being adaptable and how to do something about the things that might exasperate you as a form of “active meditation” and catharsis.You can find Peter's books on Brexit - such as “Reboot Britain” and “Private Eyelines” - as well as a wealth of other commentary at brexitrage.com (if link doesn't work, copy and paste URL)You can also order these books through Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/RebootBritain?ref=shop_sugg_marketFind out more about The Academy of Rock and Human Dynamics consulting at humdyn.co.uk (if link doesn't work, copy and paste URL)His numerous other books on business innovation, leadership, and the fusion between music and business can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peter-Cook/e/B001HPBGD2/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dskZen Sammich needs your support!If you enjoyed this episode or the Zen Sammich podcast in general, consider making a one time $5 donation through PayPal (www.paypal.com/us/home) or for any amount that suits your budget. The email address used to do so is zensammich@gmail.com. Or, go through Red Circle at the link provided, just click "sponsor this podcaster."You can also become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $3 at patreon.com/zensammich (please copy and paste the URL).All proceeds keep the show going and ad free! Thanks!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/zen-sammich/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of Syntax, Scott and Wes bring you the long-awaited Deno show — what it is, what it replaces, how you can use it, and more! Deque - Sponsor Deque’s free axe browser extension helps developers instantly catch 50% of accessibility bugs while they code. It’s lightweight, easy-to-use, and has zero false positives. Get started for free at deque.com/axe. Sentry - Sponsor If you want to know what’s happening with your errors, track them with Sentry. Sentry is open-source error tracking that helps developers monitor and fix crashes in real time. Cut your time on error resolution from five hours to five minutes. It works with any language and integrates with dozens of other services. Syntax listeners can get two months for free by visiting Sentry.io and using the coupon code “tastytreat”. Mux - Sponsor Mux Video is an API-first platform that makes it easy for any developer to build beautiful video. Powered by data and designed by video experts, your video will work perfectly on every device, every time. Mux Video handles storage, encoding, and delivery so you can focus on building your product. Live streaming is just as easy and Mux will scale with you as you grow, whether you’re serving a few dozen streams or a few million. Visit mux.com/syntax. Show Notes 02:13 - What is it? A secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript Built by Ryan Dhal — same guy who initially built Node.js API is JS or TS out of the box 04:55 - Does it replace / what is it in relation to? Node It’s a replacement for Node.js Express Web Server Frameworks like Express will run on Deno, but Express itself won’t currently run because they are build on Node APIs https://github.com/oakserver/oak Serverless Deno can be used for anything, so it can be used for serverless functions, or a traditional web server Serverless, Deno and TypeScript with Brian Leroux React / Vue / Svelte These things are just JavaScript, so they should/will work in Deno. Deno will replace your tooling. More involved things like Next.js that require Node APIs won’t work until. https://alephjs.org/ SSR It comes with all browser APIs out of the box! Fetch Window + Add Event listener Webpack / Parcel / Snowpack Deno is a bundler Prettier Deno is a formatter TSC Deno is a TypeScript compiler and runtime ESLint Deno is a linter Jest Deno is a Test Runner NPM Deno is a package manager - it pulls in packages from URLs 14:51 - Modules ES modules from the start Modules are loaded from URLs Why? No package registry to worry about This is how the browser works Import from URL You can also specify it in the json file https://github.com/oakserver/oak/blob/main/deps.ts https://deno.land/ Fetch is built in! It’s a browser API, but who cares?! Browser APIs window.add event Listener Deno is event based, like the browser 20:10 - A nice standard library https://github.com/denoland/deno/tree/master/std 22:14 - WASM Deno can run WASM with the same APIs that the browsers can Node is doing this too (experimental) 25:06 - Multi-threading with Web Workers 26:13 - Speed It’s fast! They took everything they learned from Node - good and bad Built in Rust From what we understand: V8 is written in C++ Node is written in C, C++ and JavaScript How it talks to V8 - Rust sits in-between the JS runtime, and the C++ V8 runtime and communicates between the two. https://github.com/denoland/deno/blob/master/core/examples/hello_world.rs 29:44 - Security Sandboxed —allow-read —allow-net -allow-write https://deno.land/manual@v1.6.3/getting_started/permissions#permissions-list You can specify which dirs it can access 33:39 - Run from anywhere https://www.npmjs.com/package/npx Deno run https://cool.com/whatever.ts 37:43 - Async out of the box Everything is based on async + await / promises right away. No callback APIs, no promise wrapping. Top level await 38:53 - Node Compatibility Node APIs are being filled This means if a browser package ships an ES module of a package, we can just import it 42:21 - What we’ve built A bunch of sample scripts Lots of simple demos Very intuitive Fetched and downloaded every single Syntax mp3 https://twitter.com/wesbos/status/1326345600141582336 46:54 - Hosting Literally any linux server (Linode, Digital Ocean, etc.) https://begin.com/ https://fly.io/ 48:29 - Final thoughts Scott: Now is a great time to learn, but don’t put any crucial work into that space unless you are ready to write everything. Libraries are still being written and evolved. Docs are still sparse. Many things didn’t work on first try. I had to read lots of source. Wes: If You know JS or TS, you are already 90% there. The package ecosystem isn’t there yet Battle-tested ××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ××× Scott: Boom/Bust: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia Wes: Orthopaedic Pillow Shameless Plugs Scott: Deno 101 For Web Developers - Sign up for the year and save 25%! Wes: All Courses - Use the coupon code ‘Syntax’ for $10 off! Tweet us your tasty treats! Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets

  Hey there, welcome to episode 30 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.  Can I just say, I’m a little excited to hit 30 – it’s not a big milestone, but it’s a milestone, nonetheless.  I thought I’d run out of topics by now, when I started out, and now I’m thinking I need to do more than 1 a week just to say everything I have to say! This week I am talking all things LinkedIn – my absolute favourite social media platform!  If you’ve missed the last two episodes or if you’re new to my world, episodes 28 & 29 were audits of Facebook and Instagram respectively, so if you’re on those platforms – head back there and listen into those. Let’s not forget my gratitude that you are listening in – you have a lot of choices – so I am very grateful you are lending me your ears today.  It wasn’t long ago that I did an episode on it – in fact it was Episode 20.  I will try not to repeat myself too much, but I do encourage you to head back there and listen into that episode. LinkedIn is my absolute fav of all the social media platforms.  That surprises many as many of the small business owners I came across are not going it to the attention and weight that it deserves – they are perhaps still trying to get their head around Facebook and Instagram! But I hope, by the time I have finished this episode, I will have convinced you to start using LinkedIn or giving it some more love, if you’re already on the platform. Remember, and this is a big thing to remember, googling anyone’s name will bring up their LinkedIn profile in the first 2 or so listings on a google search – that’s how powerful a LinkedIn profile can be.  Spend all your money on SEO only to be able to rank by having a good LinkedIn profile with key words!  It’s like magic – free magic! But first, of course, let’s do our discovery of the week! THIS WEEK’S DISCOVERY! Headshots – I’ve spoken at length about them on the last two podcasts with auditing both your Facebook and your Instagram profiles – and I am about to talk about them again. So, I thought it would be appropriate to make this week’s Discovery of the Week about headshots! My photographer, Karen Merry, shout out to Merry Images, told me about this website ages ago.  So, one of the best ways to make sure your headshot is LinkedIn worthy is to use Photofeeler. Photofeeler puts your headshot in front of thousands of people who anonymously rank it for competence, likability, and influence. You can upload a few different versions of your headshot and use the one that users rank the best on LinkedIn. It’s not an exact science, but if it helps you choose a photo that’s going to attract the right people to your business – it might be worth a go!  I’d love to hear your thoughts if you go across and use it. As always, just a little disclaimer, my discoveries are just that and I am in no way affiliated with any of them but promise to tell you if I ever am.  I just love them and from the response of my listeners, you guys, you are loving them too! Hey and if you have a little discovery, or something you use in your business that you’d like to share, please do so.  Email me at jenn@jenndonovan.com.au or tag me @smallbusinessmadesimple.  I really love to know what tools you use to help make your life simpler! LINKEDIN AUDIT LinkedIn is professional Facebook.  No trolls and a heck of a lot more respect and it’s fabulous for connections and even education.  If there’s an expert in their field, they’ll be on LinkedIn.  HINT:: if you’re an expert in your field, better get on it! It’s a great platform for connection with people – it’s like networking but online.  So, if you think networking can help grow your business or grow you (because we should always be investing in ourselves) then it’s the platform for you. Now, confession time, when I saw it’s my favourite platform, it wasn’t always like that.  When I had my retail shop, it made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  I did not invest the time or energy to find out or see how it could work for me. But as I evolved as a business owner and my business evolved, I began to see and harness its power for connections. One thing I have realised about LinkedIn which has allowed me to have such fantastic growth into my business, if you really do have to give to get! You should be reaching out on any platform, but this one, in particular, can really love you back if you love it first! Ok, that’s enough convincing that this should the platform for you, let’s get down to some auditing:: Your profile picture If you’ve listened to my past two episodes you’ll notice I’m repeating myself here.  Your profile picture should be of you, should be professional and should give the message you want your audience to get.  It should look like you, today, not 10 years ago – today. Looking sexy when you’re a chiropractor, not a good look.  Glamour shots – nope.  Not looking at the camera – nope!  Pets/friends/partners – nope nope nope.  You want to be engaging, you want to give the impression of someone trustworthy, authentic and an authority in whatever their expertise is.  They should want to connect with you!  If you’re not sure – use this week’s discovery Photofeeler.com If you can’t afford a professional photo shoot – then find a white wall or through a white sheet over your clothesline, use filters on your phone and ask a friend or partner to take it for you.  There’s always tricks to a good photo that will take effort but not money.  But remember if you’re not willing to invest in you – will they? Your background photo LinkedIn automatically gives you a blue background to your profile.  If you still have it – promise me you’ll fix that as soon as this Podcast finishes? When I look at someone’s background, I want to see, in pictures, what they do.  If a picture tells a 1000 words, then make this one count! If you’re a speaker, have a photo or photos of you speaking.  If you teach leadership, your picture should show you leading.  If you’re in customer service, show yourself giving service.  You get the picture right? Canva.com – my favourite of all my discoveries, has lots of templates to help you play with your background photo.  They have the dimensions right – it’s just a matter of you choosing a template and making it work for you.  Don’t be afraid to play. Your background is also a great piece of real estate for advertising your services or upcoming workshops et cetera.  So, don’t be afraid to change it, as the seasons and reasons in your business change. Your Bio So, now you’ve shown them you’ve trustworthy and told them what we do in pictures, it’s time to use our words – your bio. Your bio, if you look at your profile, sits right below your name. In your bio, you have just 120 characters to grab your audience’s attention. Make this snippet about your audience and how you can help. Who do you help and how do you help them?  You have 120 characters to answer those two questions.  Use emojis or lines to separate words to make it look more engaging. Your LinkedIn headline is one of the most visible sections of your LinkedIn profile. It’s also one of the most important fields for LinkedIn’s search algorithm. Not only should your LinkedIn headline portray you as a credible member of your industry, it should also contain strategic keywords that help you appear higher in LinkedIn searches. Again, you have 120 characters to play with! About Section Your goal with your about section is to:: Fill it all in! and Get leads to call you or connect with you. And by leads I mean, people who will one day do business with you! To write the about section – be succinct, clear and concise.  Step 1: Write a short sentence about where you work and what you do, including any brands you sell. Step 2: Include your contact details, website address etc, after the first sentence.  You want this stuff above the fold – visible before someone has to click the “see more” button. Step 3: Answer the following questions Who do you serve? Persons/areas/brands and so forth What do you do? Why should someone choose to buy from you as opposed to everyone else who sells what you sell or does what you do? Include why your brand and why you, your experience and so forth. (You have 2000 characters in this section). To make this a bit more actionable, fill in these blanks:: TAP here to discover how I can help you …… (what do you help someone do) Insert contacts (how do you want to be contacted, website, DM, phone, email etcetera – this goes next Who is your target market? What is their biggest pain point? Include a link to schedule a chat or an appointment – if this is how you want to be contacted. My mission is to help (who do you help) ….. Why you?  Why you do what you do plus something personal or human to human engaging Any claims to fame (awards etc) Any links to articles you’ve written, videos you’ve done or lead magnets you want to include Lastly, again your contact details:  To let me assist you with ….., reach out at …… Your Contact Information Utilize the contact info area.  When someone visits your profile, is intrigued by your branding, is hooked in by how you can help them, then they will naturally click through that ‘See contact info’ link under your bio. Make sure the links here are current and valid!  If this was a blog post – I’d underline that – so let me repeat it – make sure the links there are current and valid. PRO TIP:: Your website address doesn’t have to be your home page – think about where you would like a LinkedIn connection to go if they were visiting your website.  Think about the type of person you’d like to attract and personalise it for that persona.  Personalise your URL You can customize your public profile URL when you change what appears on your public profile. Custom public profile URLs are available on a first come, first served basis.   Again, think google ranking when someone is googling you – magic I’m telling you, magic! If you look at your URL and it’s got numbers and letters after it, it’s really easy to change.  Check out my show notes at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au to see how to do it.  To change your public profile URL: Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage. Click View profile. On your profile page, click Edit public profile & URL on the right rail. Under Edit URL in the right rail, click the Edit icon next to your public profile URL. It'll be an address that looks like www.linkedin.com/in/yourname. Type the last part of your new custom URL in the text box. Click Save. CONTENT So now we have an updated profile, engaging headshot, great background that tells a story, our own URL, and headline and an about section to die for – now it’s all about the content you provide.  So, let’s quickly have a look at that. If you’re a regular listener to my podcast you probably know what I’m about to say – if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it often – KNOW WHO YOUR WHO IS.  It’s just not something us marketers say – it really is SUPER important to have a handle on.  If you’ve not worked on your client avatar before, maybe head back to episode 25 where I talk at length about getting to know your who. So, if you know who you want to attract on LinkedIn, it makes creating, curating and designing content for your audience here so much simpler! Can you repurpose what you’ve put on other social media sites?  Yes, to a degree! If your target audience is the same – YES BUT, remember this is professional Facebook so sometimes you might be able to deliver the same message, content, idea but the language you use to convey that might be different to other platforms. You be you for sure – but just be aware of the language you are using here and if it’s appropriate. Here’s an example of what I mean:: LinkedIn is for professionals – business owners.  Yes, granted we are all consumers at one time or another, but here we are business owners and therefore nearly everyone on the platform has something to sell.  They may not be selling but they definitely have something to sell. So, going in with a selling mentality like you might on another platform, won’t work here.  On all platforms we should have a give, give, give, ask mentality, but here, everyone is selling – so being a big fish in a small pond is harder – so with content it’s has to be value, value, value. Write blogs – repurpose them here.  Repurpose them, for instance, as Articles (LinkedIn’s built in blog platform) Short snippet paragraph or video taking 1 point from the blog and then pointing to the blog Take quotes from your blog and do “quote” posts and add more text to it – again, linking to the original blog Images with stats over them always get engagement! Repurpose your blog into an Infographic if you can If you don’t write blogs, the content you would share would still be of that educational version – never underestimate what you know that others need to know – heck millions of people have built businesses and podcasts on just that premise!  I know this – you need to know this – so I’ll tell you – sometimes I’ll tell you for free, sometimes you’ll have to pay me for it! My podcast is free for everyone to listen too – my course Facebook Ads for Beginners won’t be! Other subjects you might post about on LinkedIn might be:: Industry knowledge The latest and greatest trends Tips, tricks and how-to’s Part of a PowerPoint presentation Make industry predictions Talk about patterns in your industry Lessons you’ve learned Hot media stories that relate to your business (or an angle that does!) Celebrate company/business triumphs, milestones and wins If you have a team – highlight a team member Share someone’s content that not in competition to you but complimentary and you know your audience would love to know about X too. Can I give you a PRO TIP – you might not like it …. Video, video, video Facts: Video is 5x more likely than other types of content to start a conversation among members. LinkedIn members spend almost 3x more time watching video ads compared to time spent with static content. If you hadn’t heard, LinkedIn just went all in on video. You could do a short video series – like LinkedIn Marketing Minute or video case studies.  Or you can just stand in front of your camera and talk!  Captions – remember captions – they are important because people are looking at LinkedIn at work (most than likely) and don’t necessarily have the sound on. Business Pages on LinkedIn are making a comeback.  You’ve been able to build a business page since the platform existed, I think, but they haven’t been all that successful and honestly they have a little way to go – as there’s lots of clicks to get to them.  But it’s definitely something to put on your to-do list – it’s on mine.  It will be interesting to see 12 months from now what weight and power they hold. Before I finish up talking about this wonderful platform, I’ll give you the Pro tip to end all pro tips – on this platform, if you engage, reach out, give value, connect with people with a personalised message, respond to connect requests with personalised messages, comment, like and give love – it WILL come back to you 10 fold.  This is what I recommend for ALL social media platforms, but they all won’t love you back as much as LinkedIn will because the algorithm hasn’t killed the platform yet.  It’s almost algorithm-less (sort of!).  Microsoft owns the platform and they are doing great things – follow trends yes but trying to stay different. Embrace LinkedIn, and if you’re someone who sells physical product, be an early adopter and give this platform a go. There’s lots of other tips and tricks when it comes to LinkedIn – but I covered them in Episode 20 – so head back there and have a listen.  This episode was more of an audit of your account – but Episode 20 is an in depth run down of the platform for sure. FINALLY:: DON’T FORGET TO CONNECT YOUR EMPLOYER IF THEY HAVE A PAGE ON LINKEDIN! So – that was quite the episode – I hope you got lots of gold from it.  But that is it for episode 30. If you have any queries, questions, thoughts tips or tricks, let’s continue this conversation in my Facebook Group – Like Minded Business Owners. Not joined yet.  Well welcome … let’s do that! I’ll be back next Thursday with some more marketing know-how and another discovery of course.  If you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this with a friend.  And maybe leave me a rating and a review wherever you listen in.  Those things are like gold for podcasters like me!  PS – you can leave more than one rating and review – just saying! Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that special gift that only you have.  Thanks, so much for lending me your ears, I know you have LOADS of options – so thank you for making me one of them.  I’d love to connect with you all on LinkedIn – look me up – Jenn Donovan – that’s Jenn with 2 x n’s and Donovan – D O N O V A N …….. and remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!

Today we're going to talk about chatbots. Using Chat Bots to Triple Your Sales Conversions without being tech savvy.  With Heather Havenwood all about using Chatbots within Facebook to grow your business. I'm happy to have a returning guest with us Heather Havenwood. And we had her on a while ago and she offered up some awesome content to know who you're selling to. So, after this episode, you might want to go and listen to that episode of know who you're selling to. But today we're going to talk about chatbots. How to triple your conversion rates with your sales without being tech savvy. So, if you don't know about Heather let me tell you a little bit about her. She is CEO of Hazelwood worldwide. She's sexy boss, a serial entrepreneur and is regarded as a top 40 in internet marketing business strategies and marketing. She since marketing her first online business in 1999, brings together clients and personal coaches. She has played an active role in online marketing world since before most of us even had computers. In 2006 she started developing and growing online information marketing publishing company from ground zero to over a million dollars sales in less than 12 months starting with a list of the product name or an offer. Heather and molded her clients into successful gurus now known as the expert in this field. She is awesome, and she really knows her stuff. So, let's welcome Heather today. Heather so great to have you again. And I'm just so excited to really talk about chatbots. I know it's something new that I've heard about a little but almost nothing. So, this is going to be exciting. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun so it's going to be different and chatbots, feel like what's a chatbot, I will explain all of that. Awesome. OK. All right. So, here's what chatbot is. I mean just kind of dive into it if you're ok with that. My name is. My name is Heather Havenwood and I'm a marketer in an online marketing for since 2001 and I had my, I actually got my online degree my master's degree in 2010. My first million online was in 2005 right so I've been around a long time in one of the things about me is I'm an early adopter. Not everyone's like that. I got that from my father actually. Whenever there was a change of technology from BETA to VHS to like those discs we had for a while he was like the first one out the gate to buy the technology. In fact, in 1985 just to give you I guess when I get this from 1985 he had a physical bone in his car wired in his car he drove 80 miles from our house to the nearest train and when the train ran by he called his buddy and said look I'm, I'm in my car and a car phone is like 1985. OK. Wow. And I think it was like 50 dollars a minute or whatever it was. But this is before the bag phone. He was one of the first people in Houston Texas in the 80s to get a phone and he was very proud of that. So that's just I think that's where I get it from. I'm a true early adopter and I kind of have it. It's like I've heard about it. I'm probably late. I just have this kind of weird thing. But, I will say with chatbots it's a little bit different technology, but it really is the future. So, let's kind of take you back down to a technology lane if you will. Right. Let's start with good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages. I remember going up we have yellow pages. My grandmother lived on her yellow pages. He wanted a plumber, or they wanted a roofer, they wanted whatever they open the yellow pages and all the market people talked about the yellow page remember that. Yeah absolutely. All right the bigger the ad the more people who will get to read the copy. And then what you trying to get them to do. You tried to get them to do what. Call the office sure. That was the thing. And then you got them to convert from there. Then we had the big explosion of online marketing in the last couple least of decades. Is it all about ads. Now no longer Yellow Pages but now that it was newspaper ads direct mail it's all about no matter what your ad is Facebook, online, Google, Yelp what are you going to do. Call. You still want them to call or go to your Web site and call. Especially with service-based businesses. Absolutely. Mainly because you want to say what's going on what's happening. When can we meet? Here's what's happening with text messaging. So, let me give you kind of an example. Go back three years. I opened a weight loss company here in Austin. So, it was a service-based business. Local business right. And it was kind of a new business and so what we want to do is again like you guys we wanted them to call to set an appointment. But from the beginning, I knew that a couple of things one of our target markets was women in the construction business even though it's predominantly male-dominated the customer is the woman. Absolutely right. She's the one dealing with the leaky roof she's the one dealing with all of that. The plumbing situation even though maybe you know the man comes in to fix it. The customer is a woman. Absolutely. Go back to this weight loss program. I knew the market was women and women like texting more than men. There's stats on that. OK. So, I thought to myself OK well we're going to set this phone number up. Obviously, we said the phone number, but it was a virtual number for the beginning. There's all kinds of companies you can use Grasshopper, Google Voice, whatever. And the number one thing that I said the company we have to make sure the phone number is textable and the like really __, it has to be textable and it has to be text was such a way that no matter who is working that day, myself I work in the office as virtual or anybody that we actually had in the office that they physically, they could text message back the customer as fast as they possibly could. So, it first happened my staff was like no one's going to text us or on my watch. Sure, enough we put on all our ads either on the Website, Yelp, Google ads whatever our thing was when we did even radio we said call or text number, call or text number. And guess what happened. We had people text and they say: “I just heard your ad on, I just saw your ad on Yelp, whatever can you tell me more about it?” Now here's what's happening. People are busy. They got their lives going on their moms or whatever they're busy lives right. They go oh I really want to try that. I'll send them a text but they don't really want to have the time to call and have this big conversation. Right. Right. So, it's their way of kind of like oh I'll start something and then like a follow-up. But they don't want to e-mail either because they kind of want to talk to somebody, so they text. Now here's another example. So, we actually had a huge amount still, do have you drop people texting. And then what we do is we'll text back and forth a little bit and then go hey is this a good time to call you so we can now continue the conversation get your schedule and then they’ll go “Yeah, come in 10 minutes or actually give me five minutes. Yeah. Call me now” Boom. Now we’re calling, we've had we've had a connection, come on the phones, schedule an appointment, you'd be surprised. Well the interesting thing, I’m hearing you're going through the whole sequence. You’re texting back and forth and you're creating a dialogue and a familiarity and then you're asking them permission to call them which then they're saying yes. Yeah exactly. They reached out with the text which is what I call a soft connection. No commitment. And then-then we would always encourage our staff to say try to get on the phones as fast as possibly can so they can answer questions faster. Of course, and get an appointment. And but when you're in that dialogue then you can have a permission-based conversation where you're like hey is a good time call you when should I call you? Perfect timing I'm driving. Great. You know or hey you're going to be on speaker with the kids. No problem. You know so now you're calling them and they are inviting us to call them. I know that's so awesome. It is also, that we did. So, here's another thing and give me another example here just in case you're just like oh I don't believe it. I had a gentleman who was in a mastermind with me who his agency did all was managing all the lawyer infomercials to just commercials right across the country and that the lawyer was one of those ones where it's like: “Do you this crazy sickness I can never say it. OK. I can't say I call this number does you have this. This is, call this number. You know your part of a class action lawsuit” So that was his agency like blasting this and their conversion wasn't getting very high and they didn't understand. So, they, once someone said someone called in the customers who are feeling like and she goes well someone called in the other day and said they tried to text the number and nothing happened. And of course, everyone in the agencies that text the number that they go to. Why don't you make the number textable and see what happens? So, said what we could do that. Right. So, they made the same phone number. No changes really textable. And I think on the ad they put, call or text. What do you think happened? They got and ended with texts because nobody wants the call and really talk to somebody right now. Exactly. They don't want to be sold. Right. And you also don't know maybe they're in a loud factory or maybe a hospital, maybe they didn't want to actually talk to, they can't, maybe they legally can't, maybe are in front of people they don't want to have a conversation about right. Oh yes, let’s talk to a lawyer right. So, there are all kinds of reasons why people text versus call. Sure. Right. My sister, when she's in a certain area of her work. She can't take calls because for some reason the area is restricted. She's like I can text you but I can't call you back. Right. So, stuff like this you just realize that you can still get in communication and so give the customer through text so what they did they made it textable and they got inundated their conversion went way up and they're all happy. Right. Yeah. Instead, they made the customer service people take the text and they, it’s just like chat nowadays. I mean I go when I do customer service for clients or I go into a software that I'm purchasing the first thing I do is chat right because I have music in the background or I have you know kids screaming the background the dogs, but I can chat through what I need but I can't get a call. So, the point do you want to do more of that and that's where chatbots come in. OK So, here's what's happening now because people are already used to texting. And sometimes people don't even want to give out their phone number because when they text you, you’re the front of them. Yeah. What's happening now is Facebook early 2017. They opened up their API. We will talk for a second. They opened up their API for their messenger which is their texting communication right. They opened it up, API really from the concept of what do we do with this thing. We want more people on our platform. We pretty much want to take over the world. We don't want anyone anymore to even use their phone. They want us to call and voice call and video call and do everything with Facebook. How can we get more businesses to use our services? How can we get more businesses on our platform? They go well let's open up the API and see what happens. They open up the API. Kind of like OK developers go. We don't know how to sell this so why don't we just open up the platform. And there's about 40, 50 companies in San Francisco area and they are kind of tap the shoulders on and said OK. You start your own company and we're going to let you API into our service. It's not for the public it's just for like who we tap and see if you can find a way that will you know will basically increase the amount of businesses on our platform. So that's what happened. And it's only been around pretty much since the first quarter of  2017 and what's happened now is there are all these different services trying to figure this out where they are now no longer on their Website no longer saying things like click to my Website or click to chat or click to call. They're saying hey click here to talk to somebody right away. And it opens up the Facebook messenger app on desktop as well as mobile. And so, what happens is you now are engaging with the company via their Facebook app, via their fan page or their business page immediately. Interesting. Yeah. So, then you can move them from there to wherever you want. Here's a link to site for a service. You know why don't you give us a call I'm available right now. By the way, you're on our fan page if you click on this link it takes you to our service agreement whatever you want. What they're trying to do is have it so that business is really no longer would have Websites they just have business pages. Wow. That’s interesting. And that's why I think it is. And it's clickable so here's how it hits it and then I would go to the next level of this. So, I'm going to give you my chatbot link right now and I want everyone listening to go to this URL and engage with my chatbot and notice how different it is than going into our website to opt-in or just calling me or anything like that. Notice the differences here 's the URL, ready? Yup. www. askheatherann.com.  My name is Heather Anne so, askheatherann.com. Now you put that in URL, no matter if you’re on desktop, no matter if your iPad, or your phone it's going to happen. It's going to open it and it's going to turn, you'll see that like open and open again, and it will go right to Facebook Messenger. Wow. Ok. . Yes. So that once you experience it now mine's customized and the first thing it says is like “Hi” and it starts to have a conversation like Hi I'm Heather Havenwood. This is what I do, you know. And then I ask it a question. The first question I ask when I ask you is “What's your name?” What am I doing? I'm building a list near you. David, you're like great Dave. They'll say tell you what do you own a business because that's what I do. Right. And you can say yes or no. “Great!” right you're in a business that's awesome because that's what I do I help businesses expand their space expand their revenue through different through exposure visibility and profitability. You go, “Great!” And it will tell you what I like because “I'm a bot. I don't know if you're man or woman. Will you tell me if you're man or a woman? Then you say, “Man” Type in MAN. “Great!” Right. Expands things, I go, tell you what I should give your free gifts just for your time today. Here is. Will you please give me your e-mail address? You type your e-mail address. Press ‘send’. Awesome. Here is your gift. I just had an entire interaction with you. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Now here's what's cool about it. Why you're having that interaction. If I can actually watch you do this entire process live. Like I can be sitting at my desk as a customer service person or the CEO of the company. Watching people interact and at any moment in the middle of the conversation. I could just like come in and go “Hey”, “Hey, how's it going?” And I can totally take away the competition of the bot and just literally have a conversation with you. I don't know what to do. And the chatbots going. You can literally have someone go Oh hey you know I'm here right now we're available we can get someone out. Can I get your number to call you right now and what's going on? What's your address? Now, what can we do for you? Start actually communicating with the right way via chatbot and everything's recorded and everything you can see at any time. Wow. That's way, way better than a Web site. It's way better than a website right. First of all, it doesn't go there then opt-in and you get autoresponder. You just need a whole process right. And so, you can so much time. But here's the cool piece. It also brands you it has a conversation. There's a company here in Austin called the Reliant plumbing. And oh my god they, they do the best ads. They really do.  I have to give them credit. The radio ads and ads and its husband-wife team. I’ve never used them but I hear their stuff all the time. And, the radio ads. it's husband-wife team. And they have this kind of brand, the whole fun team going on. But they’re still on plumbing for God’s sake.  And you got to rate it, it’s funny. So, they lost the whole brand through fame. Now they just drive people to the website of course and their brand and their phone number. And I don't they do text messaging but they've created this kind of funny brand. Between them, you know between the husband-wife. He acts like these guys as goofy guy and she acts like she's like seriously honey you know like that whole thing. Imagine if you had a cartoon of them were few ones with chatbots and high, and all of a sudden you had the spokespeople the CEO's husband-wife team basically talked to you go “Hey!” And they had this little fun banter for ten seconds. You're reengaging with them and you're reengaging with your brand. And that's key because we want to, at the end of the day businesses what do business people it's human to human interaction. They don't run businesses with brands. But what they what they what we're doing now with artificial intelligence basically is rebuilding connection with bots which is aka a cartoon of Disney. We have a relationship to Winnie the Pooh. We have a relationship to Mickey Mouse. We can have a relationship with a cartoon right represent something to us. Remember that the movie with Tom Hanks where he's alone on an island for forever. He literally had a relationship with a volleyball called Wilson. Right. Right. He built this interaction with it. We have this is old school, Wendy’s. You know we've had interactions with the dog, Spot. I think it was Budweiser. We've had we've had relationships with inanimate objects before and cartoons. That is a way to connect with an audience. So that's how Chat Bots allow, you to do that and it also allows you going at one level but also alleged that sustained interaction fast speed connection with the with the with your customer and you don't have to have a big hole. You know there are services you get that are called chat services. Yeah. Yes, that's true. That takes a little more manpower right because any anybody in your office can be logged into and be a part of the Facebook business page. And anybody can be having a conversation with a client. It starts with the CEO. Yes. Yeah. It's kind of interesting because it's like you know even when you get a text on your phone or you check it always before you will an e-mail. So, the chatbots if you’re on the other end you just know that it's up and running all the time and you would be able to use it so much better than answering the phone ain’t it? Yeah absolutely. And plus, on top of that you know you again you don't know are people going on in the background their world right. Being able to chat and have a conversation with a service provider like Hey I like to have you come out roofing. I've got a hole Yeah, I live in South Elvis or the South Austin. I really rather have it on Tuesday and how this whole conversation and go Yeah. Well, we have something available 2;00 on Tuesday. Here's my address. Thank you so much. We'll follow up with you in a week. All that can be done. In fact, my head my AC go out actually three months ago and believe it not I was very impressed. This company texts me a text me but the only thing that I think they did incorrectly is that I had a phone number I called. And then the text came directly from the technician. The problem with that is a different phone number. Wouldn't it be that everything comes from one place? That's the beauty of Chat Bot. You don't have three numbers right. It could be anyone. Right. Because the technician can leave. They can leave the company tomorrow, in a year, and you really don’t want to have that right. When you want to own the customer. And with all the technology there is today you can have all your phone numbers from the company forwarded from one out. Yeah. So, if I have five technicians they could all be routed through that one number. Exactly. Yeah. So that way. Anyway, like I said with Facebook how Facebook as if I own a Facebook page and I own a business I can have you as they call it editor. I don't have this system. I can have a business manager all the editors at any moment. Everyone's texting from the same location to the customer. So that's continuity. Right, it’s continuity to the customer, so a customer's text via Facebook Messenger. They used to clock smart. That sounds great. Awesome. And then all of a sudden you have the technician Mike go “Hey Sarah. This is Mike your technician”. And again, it's coming from the same place it's coming from Facebook Messenger. Just want to let you know I'm on my way. I'll be there in 15 minutes 20 minutes. I'm running late. Whatever. You know if there's any problems or any changes please just text back to this Facebook Messenger and either myself or someone from our team will help you. Right. And that's a cool thing to do because like now I and my other business have people when I talk to them though I'll ask them what method you prefer. And they probably say text me the most. Most of them are saying text now because they're on the go and no glance at a text and no answer. Or you know at times I’ll call somebody and knows you know on my phone and says I can't take the message now so they end up getting a text right. They got texts right. And I've actually had a situation where it was a service provider and I said I can't get on your calendar. You could text me and like well we don't text them you need to step up. They are in the real world so the point is that you want to have both right now. I think having your phone number textable. You can do this you can do that through Central, you can do that through Grasshopper, Google Voices is a lot of different areas you can do that is OK. But then also having the Facebook ad or the Yelp ad, you can literally text have the URL go right to the messenger. So askheatheranne.com goes right to the chat box experience. It doesn't go to my page. And then you click. No, it goes right. Right. Right. The Chat Box experienced first thing actually the interaction. And you can actually like you so you say you can give a free report or give me a free gift from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you can then you can send them to your web page if you so desire to. Exactly then definitely. I mean you'd be surprised nowadays. I mean just the other day I went to Facebook I'm looking for a new gem on something. I went their Facebook page, their business page and this was me testing them. So, went their Facebook page a business page. And I went to their message and I started texting them questions. Now, it was late at night. Like it was late, was like ten o'clock and I didn't expect them to respond at all like I expected either they weren't going to respond, or two, may or may not respond in the morning if someone's actually managing their Facebook page. What's interesting about it is the owner, she responded in 20 minutes. She’s like “hey yeah, I was sleeping. It’s all right, Sure, you know what Why don’t we give you a free weekend.  Love for you to come in. My name is Sam, I’m the owner.     I love to connect with you and see how we can support you. I was like “Awesome!”. Because well have the days of weak control of when people buy over. The nine to five is over. And so, I'm not saying you have to sit there all night. You know, and you can't ever turn your hours off and you can but have to allow people to connect with you when they want to connect with you. And lots of times it happens at seven o'clock at night when they're at dinner and their husbands like we got to fix the plumbing Let’s push it in the morning. Doesn't work anymore. It's like you know what I'll text them right now and they'll get it in the morning and they'll call me when I'm running around 8 o'clock in the morning because of so many of those in our weight loss company people text as after hours. Really? You know the interesting thing too is like I've done a lot of research, not research but you know playing with other people's websites and see how they respond. You know to email him or send him an email from their website and nobody virtually nobody checks the email that they get from their websites. Yeah, that's really strange to me. I get a lot of people don't. But if you do a texting and it is going right to you in a different format than you know, I think that's pretty awesome just the way that that whole thing set up. I’m going to have to check it out. So how did you pick up your URL? You just put it into when you set it up. Yes, you can buy your URL anywhere, of course, godaddy.com or whatever. And then ask. It doesn't make sense. I just I had I had it sitting there and now you can make it whatever you want. You can make it your company.com/contact us what you can make it whatever you want it's just an easier redirect obviously, because we’re sitting here sitting here the audio you know you know I've explained to you what it is or what's happened with the API with Facebook the techie is to notice nowadays your Facebook Messenger is now an entirely different URL M./ What Facebook did is basically, Facebook now has two websites, it’s Facebook.com and m.com. Yes, so that's why your app you have an app for Facebook and an app for messenger. OK. From a distance, so your Facebook business page Messenger is literally an entire another URL. And so, this is new to me. So, I could have Facebook off. Right. So that's how I open up my desktop with Facebook because it's too much drama. But I can communicate with business people all day long on Facebook Messenger. So, I close Facebook, but I open that messenger and I go to m.com/ you know and that opens up my messenger so all I see on the desktop is messenger. Anyone talking to me. I don't see any of the blog posts or drama or ads or any of that stuff because that's turned off okay. So, it's two, it's two entities at this point. You look at Facebook as if there's two companies two URLs and that's why the messenger literally is its own world and they're going to start. They've already started but they're slowly rolling it out. They're going to start so that you can actually advertise inside of messenger. So eventually, especially 2019. That's a good or bad thing. Yeah right. The cool thing though about that for a local business right. Save money or whatnot. A local business you can really you can really focus on people that are in their message or app at 10-mile radius or at a 50-mile radius. The other thing with that is here's what's really cool which I forgot. So, let's the moment you start interacting with my chatbot and I mean the moment all you have to say is hello. And that's considered it opt-in. So, what's happening in the background is I'm connected to a third-party service remember this third-party company I told you about I'm connected to a third-party server I pay $20 a month and there are tons of out there. One of them is called many chat spells it M A N Y C H A T.com, 20 bucks a month. What it's doing and again it's this open API company okay. What it's doing is at the moment you say “hello”. OK. On my page the moment, many chat considers that an opt-in. You've interacted. You've interacted therefore you are at opt-in. Therefore, you're now on my list. I can broadcast. I can send a New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve special to anyone that's ever interacted with my business page messenger ever. You're on my list. The cool thing about that looking e-mail list right is the messenger app is an 80-90% open rate. Message my broadcast my message list. I'm going to get a huge open rate versus an emailing blasting my list. Wow. This is just the beginning it's only been around not 11 months or so yet. It's a whole new world the about ready to explode. It is. It is and it's geared towards businesses. It really is geared towards businesses because Facebook wants to pretty much take over the business page. They want to take over the Yellow Pages right. They want to be the pages for the world so they don't know how to do that. So that's how they opened it up and now all these things are kind of coming about with entrepreneurs and they're all figuring it out. I mean a chance really expands $20 a month. All it does is basically talk to Facebook and as a third party or you know interaction that they've got the blessing from Facebook. So basically, what the Many chat does is it take everyone that interacts with you it just takes their information, stores it with you it just takes her information stored it for you. It's pretty good. So, think of it like a Manychat, board member or eye contact where you log in and you say I want to send a broadcast tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and I want to have a little image. You don't make the thing about Chat Bots you know broadcasting for Chat Bots as you make it short like a taxi you'll see like an image in like a little thing like “Awesome offer new year's offer click here or call us now for your offer” like Texas small. Yeah. Right. But then you press a button and the system sends it to everyone on your broadcast list. So, 90% open rate of your offer. Wow, that's pretty awesome.  It is awesome, right? I'm just thinking about what awesome possibilities. So, so what I do. I work with companies to do that. I mean I set their Chat Bots and it starts around a thousand dollars to do a full set up. And the reason why it takes that much money is that yes you can do it yourself there are many chat bot but I do an entire process and a marketing process of how are you using text now and how can we integrate that with your current system. Consulting involved. So, it starts with thousand usually about a two or $2,500. But I mean how many clients do you need to make up one, you know $2,400. Right. One or two in the construction business. Sure. Especially if what you are selling off its roofs. It's one deal if it fits windows and doors are its kitchens and yeah, it's one deal. Take care of it in an armpit. So, I hope that helps and I love for people to get a hold of me at www.heatherann.com and that is my own private page. So, I am the one answering questions of you really seriously have a question you can just literally message me and it's me because I'm the one logged in. Or you can go to call with www.callwithheather.com, callwithheather.com and that is my schedule on the phone with me and have a conversation and let me know how I see you I can help you know to consult with you and your marketing. I do marketing advice right, so I work with service providers as well as authors and speakers specifically and how do they increase their ROI their current marketing. I do a lot of local businesses so lawyers, Service providers, Weight loss. That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. And if they if they get in touch with you and www.askheatherann.com then they'll get a whole preview of what they can possibly expect to get you know on the short side. Yes absolutely. And are actually looking at. Call and interacts with them. So that's pretty cool. This has really been cool. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. This is just killer information like the last time I know how to do the Chat Bots that's the last time was. Know who your customer is so you can sell them. Yeah. Forgot about that other piece about that know who your customers. Just circling back. Yeah. Though women like to text more than men. Like I said that earlier. That is why if your target market is women, this is just brilliant. I mean it really is brilliant. Really. I know that the technicians usually are men were generalizing of course but women are usually the ones writing the check. Right. I agree. Just like my daughter, she has six kids don't even think about calling her. Oh my. Oh my God yeah. Text her, and if one of the other kids see this they'll pick up the phone and text back. But she barely really answers the phone. Well, I can only imagine. Right. So yes, I'm surprised she can even text but a good example. A lot of what I mean. Yeah. You’d be surprise texting I'll do stop in there. They're doing all kinds of things and they'll text. But getting a phone call out of them is like forget about it. You'd be surprised how just doing this one thing can really just increase your conversion. Because remember your target market is. And if you're over there going I'm old school. What the hell are you talking about Heather? I’m like “What? look you're not your market. You're not the one writing the check. Yeah. They’d get up to speed or die, it’s about it. Let the millennial business owner take your spot in the market. Exactly. My father last, I checked I haven't even tried it in a couple of years. He hadn’t a flip phone. You know like he doesn’t even get texts but he's an early adopter too which always makes me like what happened to you. I think he got retirees, forget it I’m not an early adopter anymore. But I did my first text message in 1988. 1988. And it was. I was working for a telecom company and we, of course, have the cell phone and that Nokia; the Nokia dealer was there at the offices way back. You remember that. And they were explaining to us text message and were all in the conference room about 10 of us. And I never forget it. And I said to my friend Brad, “Brad I'm going to text you ok. Hold on a sec” I put HI. You know you heard his little phone go ding ding. He’s like WOW, I got it. He's like OK I'll text you back. Hi. Oh my God, Oh, my god. We are in the same conference room. It was like, Woah, that’s so, really, how did you get to. So, things had changed a lot.  Oh yeah. We still want to talk to humans. We still want to have a relationship with the people that we're giving money to. So, believe it or not, text us. Text us here. No, it's not something that's going to get progressively more interesting let’s put it that way to interact and engage with our customers. So, thanks for having me I really appreciate this. I really appreciate you being with us this morning. It has been an awesome day. This has really been some awesome content. Heather has just given us some tremendous information on how you can jump ahead of the game. Jump ahead of your competition and be that guy or gal that's in control of what's going on within your business triple your conversion rates. Figure out how to use chatbots is just another tool in your toolbox. That's all it is. So, until the next time, we meet be profitable, have fun enjoy your business. . You may visit these websites to connect with Heather Havenwood: www.askheatherann.com www.heatherann.com www.callwithheather.com There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.   4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers   If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet.       Our sponsors   Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money   How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb   Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/  

I thought it was about time I did something REALLY helpful and did the research required to tell you exactly - step by step - how to submit your show to every conceivable place you can to increase your podcast’s reach. I’m talking about Podcast Directories, people! But the problem is this: every conceivable place is not always the BEST place (in my humble opinion). Why would I EVEN SAY such a thing? Two reasons: #1 - There are many options that require you to use their hosting/advertising/app/whatever-thingie-ma-bobber-they’re-hawking. So unless you are specifically looking for those kinds of opportunities, they’re not much use to you. #2 - Some of the directories out there don’t appear to be professionally done, which in my mind means it’s likely not truly advantageous for your show to be in them. So… THIS episode is a walk through of the many podcast directory-ish places you can list your show that I deemed were worth the time of doing so. And I should probably ALSO say… The list and instructions I’m about to share DO NOT contain sites that pull directly from Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes). Why? - Because if you submit to Apple Podcasts, you’ll automatically be included in those directories or apps. Which includes MOST IOS or Android podcast apps. Be it known… I have done EXACTLY what I’m telling you to do with all 3 of my podcasts. And will be referring BACK to this episode myself to submit all future podcasts I publish. And before we get too far into this… you can find EVERY directory I mention and the links and processes needed to submit to them, on the show notes page for this episode - www.PodcastFastTrack.com/79 - which is ALSO included in the description of your podcast app or player, in its entirety (as much as I have control over). And ANOTHER THING… These are in ALPHABETICAL ORDER for your sorting convenience... That’s enough of that kind of stuff - let’s get to the directories! LISTED ALPHABETICALLY Acast: Acast is a new app that claims to help podcasters with “discovery” issues (which is debated hotly in podcasting circles), but regardless, it’s a pretty cool and functional app. It includes 3 targets: Listeners - Podcasters - Advertisers. And it does include a hosting option for podcasters who are looking for something different. You can discover more about Acast at www.acast.com There are two ways to add your podcast to the Acast directory. Non-hosted You provide the Acast folks with your RSS feed and they’ll make your show searchable and listenable on their app platform. This means no monetization and no hosting. Hosted In this scenario, Acast hosts your show. Yes, you’d have to leave your current host. When you do, Acast will provide opportunities to monetize your show (ads or sponsorships) and you’ll have access to the Acast publishing tool and stats. So… if Acast sounds like a place you’d like to list your podcast - or a partner you might connect with for hosting/monetization. Submit to the Acast Directory Scroll down to the “Add Your Show” option near the bottom of the page. Choose your adventure (non-hosted, hosted, hosted with a brand new show) Give them the info requested Hit the “send” button Scroll UP on the resulting page to see the confirmation message That wasn’t too painful, was it? Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes) As you know, iTunes - I mean, Apple Podcasts - is the big dog, 500 pound gorilla, place-to-be when it comes to podcast search. It’s one you definitely want to put high on your priority list. Many people, including Rob Walch of Libsyn fame (previous guest on my show here, here, and here), say that if your show is not in the Apple Podcast directory you’re really not podcasting. I don’t know about that - but I do know that if Apple Podcasts is not on your radar - you’ve got the wrong radar. So get into the directory. Here’s how. Submitting to Apple Podcasts Some things you need to know about submitting… Your show needs to have at least one episode published and “live” on your feed Your cover art needs to meet the minimum 1400px X 1400px requirement And if your cover art is over 500kb in size, you’ll likely have problems (you can reduce the size by using a tool like this - https://www.reduceimages.com/ ) To submit Go to Podcasts Connect Click the plus sign at the top of the dashboard Enter your RSS feed URL into the field provided and click the “Validate” button If your feed is OK (no errors) a feed preview will appear Then click the “submit” button It typically takes the folks at Apple 6 hours to 48 hours to respond via email to let you know that your show has been approved. The process for submitting a podcast to Apple Podcast changed in the last year or so (it’s now 10/2017) so it’s good that I didn’t teach you how to do this prior to the change. Audio-Podcast.fm No super cutesy logo to represent this podcast directory, just a generic title at the top of the page. BUT the claims made on the homepage are pretty impressive… “Download from over 6.5 million audio podcast episoded. Choose from over 88 thousand podcasts in one of the largest audio podcast directories worldwide.” I’m not exactly sure HOW to go about verifying that kind of claim. I guess I’ll just have to take their word for it! ;) I’m not absolutely sure but I suspect this directory does NOT pull from Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes). The reason I think that is because I did a little experiment with my 3 podcasts. All 3 of my podcasts are listed in Apple podcasts - so I searched for each of them in turn, by name, on Audio-Podcast.fm. NONE of them came back in the search results. So I decided to submit them. Here’s how you can submit your show(s) to Audio-Podcast.fm If you go to the home page you have to scroll WAYYYY to the bottom of the page and find the TINY LITTLE TEXT LINK at the bottom (see the image). But if you use the link I provided in the title above, you’ll go right to the submission page. Here’s what you do… Paste in your RSS feed URL Choose 3 categories for your show Tick the box saying you’re the producer and have read and agree with the terms and conditions (I DARE you to actually read it) Provide your contact email address Enter the infamously-troublesome CAPTCHA code Click the green “Submit your podcast” button You’ll be taken to a greenish page that promises your show will be reviewed within 24 hours. The site will also give you the opportunity to embed an icon on your website that links to your podcast on their directory. A clever way to get backlinks from a reputable website like yours, don’t you think? Blubrry Podcast Directory The good folks at Blubrry are most widely known for their podcast hosting services and the PowerPress plugin used on many Wordpress sites. However, they have a pretty impressive podcast directory too. Here’s what they say about it… The creators of Blubrry are podcasters as well, and recognize the importance of other podcast directories including iTunes. Blubrry podcast directory does not try to compete with other directories, our main goal is to offer additional distribution points that otherwise are not available to podcasters. With this philosophy, we believe the Blubrry Podcast Directory fills the void where iTunes and podcasting is otherwise unavailable. Did you notice that bolded section? THAT is why the Blubrry directory is significant in my mind. Some of the places the Blubrry directory can list your show are… ROKU TV GOOGLE TV Android Samsung SmartTV For just a few examples… So, how do you get your show into the Blubrry podcast directory? I’m glad you asked ;) Submit your show to the Blubrry directory Create an account on the Blubrry Platform Once that’s done, add your podcast at this link You’ll be asked for you RSS feed URL You’ll be asked to create a “web friendly” name for your show You’ll be asked to choose one category for your show And you’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions Then you can hit the blue “Submit” button Not too difficult that can get your podcast onto TV boxes and the like. Well worth the effort. doubleTwist This one is not exactly a podcasting app or directory. It’s a media player. BUT, it’s also got a directory you can submit to so that people who use it can easily find your podcast. I’ve long been recommending to people that they submit to doubleTwist. And it’s an easy process. How to submit your show to doubleTwist Go to the contact page on the doubleTwist.com website Enter your name Enter your email address In the drop-down for “subject” choose “Request New Podcast” Enter the title of your podcast Enter the CAPTCHA stuff and hit the blue “Submit” button You’ll get a message that says the following… They seriously have JEDIS working for them? That’s way cool… ;) Google Play Music After a very long time of NOT supporting or listing podcasts, Google Play Music is finally onboard with podcasting. Sort of. The app still has MUCH to be desired when it comes to being good for podcast search and use (as of 10/2017) but I’m hopeful Google will get the importance of podcasting and create something native to Android that works for podcasts. Maybe a rework of Google Play Music. Maybe something new. I don’t care what. Just do something Google. So… if you’re ready to submit your show to Google Play Music, I think it’s a good idea. Submit your podcast to the Google Play Music directory You’ll have to create a Google account, first Go to the Google Play Music podcast page Click the orange “Publish Button” Click on the blue “ADD A PODCAST” button. Supply your information - including your RSS Feed URL and all requested info A brief word of caution on this one: Rob Walch, Podcaster Relations guy at Libsyn says that he wouldn’t be surprised if some day Google and Apple go toe to toe and make it hard for the other’s stuff to be used on their platforms. It’s not an inconceivable idea since Apple is already pretty proprietary in the things it does. (Just try to charge an iPhone with a non-iPhone charging cord to see what I mean). For that reason, the good folks at Libsyn have devised a way that users of their interface can create a “Google Play Music” only feed - so you can submit to Google Play Music in a way that won’t be influenced in any way by the big Apple gorilla should it decide to throw its weight around as regards your podcast feed. If you’re a Libsyn user, just go to the “Destinations” tab in your dashboard and create a new one. You’ll see the button for “Google Play Music.” Click it and do the dance. The result is a new RSS feed URL you can submit directly to Google Play as I’ve just instructed. iHeart Radio iHeart Radio is a podcasting app and SO MUCH MORE. It’s actually (as the name implies) a way to stream internet radio of all kinds, including events of various sorts. Here’s the scoop on iHeart Radio. You can’t submit your show to it directly and it does NOT pull from the Apple Podcast ecosystem. So how do you get into iHeart Radio? You have to have a relationship with someone (a company) who CAN get you into iHeart Radio. At this point, I only know of two options. #1 - Libsyn If you are a Libsyn user, you’re in - almost. Your show has to be regularly publishing for at least 2 months before you are eligible to be submitted to iHeart Radio. You also have to be using the Libsyn destination feed functionality to make it work. Once you’ve been publishing long enough, you’ll see iHeart Radio as an option in the destinations tab. Click the “Add” button and jump through the hoops.   #2 - Spreaker I have to say right up front that I’m not a Spreaker customer or user so the following instructions could be a bit wonky. But after researching things this is what I understand you need to do to submit to iHeart Radio through Spreaker... From your show’s settings, go to Spreaker’s Content Management System. Choose your show, and click the yellow EDIT button. Select iHeart in the menu that appears on the left and click the SUBMIT button. After clicking it, you'll be asked to accept the Terms and Conditions, and then submit your show to iHeartRadio. And if you’re a visual type person, here’s a great screencapture-style tutorial of how to do it from the good folks at Spreaker. So that’s how to use your connections to get into iHeart Radio. Lisn This is a pretty interesting directory. It’s been described as Podcast Directory meets Pinterest. Interesting indeed. And from first glance it has a TON of well-known and popular shows in the directory. And I didn’t even know about this one until I began researching. And the submission process couldn’t be simpler. Submitting your podcast to Lisn Go to the Lisn homepage Click on the top right-hand “hamburger” menu Choose the “Upload” option In the big, black field that says “Paste URL here” - paste your RSS feed URL there ;) Click on the upload cloud icon below the field You should see a green text success thingie that tells you to wait 12 to 24 hours for your show to appear Lisn up - that was EASY! Listen Notes I checked out the ListenNotes.com page during October, thus the site had a pumpkin in its logo. Funny. Reminds me of stuff Libsyn does around holidays. Anyway… Listen Notes is a fairly new podcast search engine that claims to be “...like Google, but for podcasts.” A self-funded software engineer from San Francisco, Wenbin Fang created the directory and it appears to be working fairly well (the site touts over 380,000 podcasts listed as of October, 2017). So, it seems beneficial to me to get listed on the directory. Who knows, it could become my #1 means of being discovered! How to get your podcast listed in the Listen Notes directory Go to www.Listennotes.com Choose the “submit” option way at the bottom (see image Once the page that opens, add your ITUNES URL for the podcast you want to submit (and be sure to copy over the http:// that’s already in the field so you don’t have problems) Enter your email address if you want to be notified when your podcast is added to the directory Click the blue/green-ish “submit” button That. Is. it. Player.FM Player FM is a multi-platform app for podcasting that even works offline. You can connect it to your TV. You can access its curated catalogue (not sure exactly HOW its curated) to find niche topics and interesting stuff. And the app costs nothing. Zilch. Nada. With no ads. There is an upgrade but with a free app this good, there are already tons of subscribers. But you’re a podcaster… so it would be great for you to get your show in front of all those people. Here’s the submission process for the Player.FM directory. Go to this link: https://player.fm/importer/new Enter your RSS feed URL in the big box (see image below) Hit the “Import” button. That was the easiest thing I’ve done all day. Podbean If you don’t know about Podbean, you’re in for a treat. I have met a person or two who works over there and they are doing some great things for the Podcast-o-sphere. Podbean is a podcast publishing service that offers both free and pay-for podcast publishing packages, so if you’re in the market for free check them out. Just keep in mind, free means there are things you might want that you won’t get. ;) Like any podcasting service or media host, Podbean offers publishing tools, stats, and more. But they also have their own directory, which anyone can get into. The benefit is that anyone who uses the Podbean App would then have access to your show - even though it’s not hosted with Podbean. Sounds smart to me. And it’s not that difficult. Here’s how to get your show listed in the Podbean Directory Click this link to create a free account (you can do so by creating a login or using Facebook or Google Plus) Create a Username for yourself The page should redirect to the submission page Enter your RSS feed URL in the space provided (be sure to remove the https:// stuff - Podbean includes it by default Your show is included immediately - yes, I mean immediately. Check out the image below Wow. Those Podbean folks aren’t playing around! Podcast Blaster As far as I can tell, the Podcast Blaster site has been around for a while. Their last blog post was published in 2007… so, that’s a sign of longevity, but I’m not sure what it says for the site’s ability to keep up with the times. Anyway… I debated about whether to include Podcast Blaster in this list or not. So I decided to peruse the site a bit. What made me decide to include it was two things: #1 - Submitting a podcast is easy, immediate, and trouble-free (once you figure out how to do it) #2 - This… I don’t know if it’s true… I just know it’s a number that got my attention. So I thought I’d include Podcast Blaster just in case it IS true (and is being updated). So here’s how to get listed in the Podcast Blaster Directory Go to this URL to add a podcast Paste your RSS feed URL into the field where it says, “Add podcast feed to directory” Hit the “Add Podcast” button. You’re done. It was so easy, I did it 3 times! And when I clicked on the link for “Latest Podcasts,” here’s what I saw… So something is being updated regularly… RadioPublic RadioPublic is both an app and a directory. It claims to have over 250,000 podcasts listed. That’s impressive. So it appears to me it’s a decent place to get your show listed. Nothing more to say about it than that - and that they have a pretty snazzy looking submission form - that requires you to enter a lot of stuff other forms don’t. But, so it is. Submit your podcast to RadioPublic Visit this page to start filling out the form Enter the name of your podcast Enter your email address Enter your RSS feed URL (be sure to copy over the default http:// stuff if you need to Then the form asks for the link to your podcast in iTunes (now Apple Podcasts) - that could be a problem for you if you don’t know how to find it. So here you go… Search for your podcast in iTunes - then hover over the cover art image and right-click (see below) Copy the link So back to the submission instructions… Paste in your iTunes link (again, copy over the http:// if you need to) Type in your website address. If you don’t have a website, it might blow up ;) Answer the question about the best way to order your episodes (interesting) Hit the submit button. That’s it. A bit long and belabored, but worth it. I think. Spotify: It’s possible, but you have to be patient - and it’s not guaranteed You’ve likely heard that Spotify is now including podcasts in its listings. And you’d be absolutely right to think it would be a good thing to get your podcast into their directory of audio resources. It is a big player when it comes to streaming audio. As of 2016 Spotify accounted for 40% of all streaming audio subscriptions. Wow, that’s a big bite of the pie! So, you tell ME - do you want your show to be in Spotify? That’s what I thought. Now I have to pause for a moment and thank Todd Cochrane, CEO over at RawVoice, the parent company of Blubrry for making me aware of the fact that Spotify has a way for pod casters to submit their shows. Thank you Todd. You’re a peach. So, let’s talk about submitting your show to Spotify... Before we get too far into this, you need to know there’s a catch. OK, it’s not quite a catch, it’s more of a caveat. Unlike the other directories or services, the powers-that-be at Spotify make it clear right up front that you can submit your show to them, but that your submission doesn’t guarantee that your show will indeed be chosen for inclusion in Spotify. IMAGE HERE So there’s that. But I think it’s worth a try anyway. Here’s how to do it. Go to this weblink: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfKJ76t_tPV2jugdX14NeajSfp7EV0hcgjVki1GEGuoeyJvDw/viewform It’s a Google form. Interesting, I don’t recall another submission process being done with a Google form. And you’ll notice right away that Spotify is making it clear that your submission may or may not be included in their directory of shows. The cool thing about this submission process is that you can submit more than one podcast at the same time. So rather than go through every form I’m just going to tell you that it’s fairly simple to do and it’s definitely worth your time. Should the Spotify authorities deem your podcast worthy enough for inclusion, your show would be exposed to all kinds of potential new listeners. Submit your podcast to Spreaker - even if you aren’t a Spreaker user Spreaker is doing some very interesting things in the podcasting space. Including a pretty cool desktop and mobile app for recording called Spreaker Studio. It’s pretty impressive. And typically, if you want to be included in the shows listed in the Spreaker App, you need to be a Spreaker customer. But… I know a way. :) Rob Greenlee is a podcasting veteran - podcasting before podcasting was even a thing. Seriously. He now works for Spreaker as Head of Content, and he’s been a guest on my podcast (episode 64). Rob told me he’d be willing to do some “additions” to their directory - to be listed in their Android and IOS Spreaker apps. He calls them “Pass Through Submissions” Here’s how to submit your podcast to Spreaker as a Pass Through Submission Send a kind email to Rob.Greenlee(at)Spreaker(dot)com Ask him to kindly include your podcast(s) in Spreaker as a “pass through” submission Include your RSS feed URL That’s it. Rob’s a peach of a guy. Stitcher Stitcher is likely the main directory for Android devices, though it is available on IOS devices and PCs as well. Over 65,000 shows are available to stream. Stitcher’s process is a bit different and a lot the same. You’ll have to sign up to be what they call a “Content Provider” and then follow a few additional steps. Sign up to submit your podcast to Stitcher Go to the Content Provider page and scroll to the bottom to sign up Once you are signed up - you’ll need to go to the Partner Portal to submit your show In the blue-ish form (see below) you’ll enter your show name Enter your RSS feed URL Choose your language Choose a category Tell how many listeners you currently have Include your Twitter handle Include your Facebook page And enter your desired keywords Tick the box to agree to the Terms of Use Click the blue “Continue” button A window will pop up for you to review your submission Click the “Submit Application” button The Podcast Source (Libsyn’s Podcast Directory) Most of you know Libsyn as an amazing podcast host. But they also have their own directory that feeds their Libsyn app exclusively. Here’s the good news: If you’re a Libsyn customer, you can likely skip this one. But I suggest you check to see if your show is included - one of my shows hosted on Libsyn was not. If you are not a Libsyn customer, you can still get into the directory. And it’s well worth your time to be included. That’s some good news, right? How to submit your podcast to The Podcast Source Directory Go to the Podcast Source App submission page Enter your RSS feed URL Enter your email address Click the green “Submit” button You’re all done. Now you can just wait eagerly for the email from the fabulous Libsyn team that tells you that your show is now included in their app directory. Tunein Tunein is another of those apps that has tons of content, including audio books. It’s becoming more and more popular from what I can tell so it’s worth the effort to make sure your show is included in their directory. And getting into the Tunein directory takes a bit more form-filler-outing than I like, but it’s their process so you have to do it their way. How to get your podcast listed in the tunein directory You’ll need to navigate to this contact page for tunein Enter your email address Enter your podcast title Enter y our host name Enter your RSS feed URL Enter your podcast logo (1200px X 1200px) Enter a banner image (1224px X 300px) Select your country Select your language Enter your website address Enter 3 genres (I wasn’t sure what they wanted here, so I guessed) Enter your “station” email (????) Enter your phone number Enter your Twitter handle Enter comments if you wish Tick the box to accept the terms Click the black-ish “Submit” button Wow. Just wow.  

Former aerospace engineer who became passionate about real estate investing, built up a rental portfolio, and has now moved into syndicating larger multifamily deals. She works with a great group of investors helping people move their money out of the stock market and into physical assets - real estate.She lives in Colorado with her husband Alex, their 2-year old son Landon and enjoy the outdoors and activities like skiing, tennis, and biking.Some dialogue from the show:1) How much simple passive Cashflow are you making today and how are you doing it?:My husband and I are making about $6-7k/month in passive cash flow from our 10 properties (22 units).2) What is your Han Solo moment? Describe the resistance that was the catalyst for change:For me, the main factor was knowing I didn’t want to stay in my then-current career path for the rest of my life. I had already been a student of real estate for several years, but finally I knew that if I didn’t want to be tied to an unfulfilling job for the rest of my life. I had to take action and starting building passive cash flow to support my lifestyle. For me the combination of desire + education = action.3)Did you "burn the boats" or did you let it happen naturally? - was there an internal (you decided to make a change on own – what was thought process?) or external trigger (ie got fired from your job)?:One thing that I’m incredibly grateful for is having a like-minded husband who I can brainstorm with. We both knew we wanted to build income from real estate, but we weren’t sure how we wanted to do it at first. Things happened fairly naturally, but it was a bit of a journey getting to where we are now. Our first “investment” as a married couple was a house we decided to fix up and sell. That was a major learning experience, and the biggest thing we learned was that we didn’t want to be house flippers! After putting tons of sweat equity in the deal (even though we had a general contractor), we made less than $10k of profit on the deal. If we had kept it as a rental for just an extra year, we would have made $40k more from appreciation. Today, 5 years later, that house is worth nearly double what we sold if for after fixing it up. After that experience, we saw buy and hold real estate as the tried and true method of building wealth relatively passively, so we set the goal to buy 2 properties (2-4 units) per year and for the most part have stuck to that plan, and it’s worked out well.4) Worst life/business moment what did you do after? Lesson learned?:I’ll have to go back my previous example with the house flip. The main lessons I learned were not to use the same contractor as your house-flipping realtor since it creates a major conflict of interest, and also that you can make more income in a less stressful way by owning cash-flowing rental properties. I also learned that strong contracts can make all the difference in a sticky situation.5) Current 2-week experiment and 6-month project? (90-180 day goal):A mark of a high performer is to put your ego aside and accept the help of others and mastermind maybe folks can help you by you asking. My current 2-week experiment is to get my son to eat his vegetables! Just kidding, in reality my next big 2 week goal is closing on our 100 unit apartment syndication. My 6-month project is get the repositioning of the apartment community well under way and get into a good business rhythm. We’re going to do a major remodelling project on the unit interiors and improve the property overall by adding covered parking, backyards, and a spruced-up office. Maybe in 6 months we’ll even have another property under contract by then!6) What is your simple passive Cashflow number? Now imagine you had 2x that amount... Describe your ideal day, detailed routine, and what projects you are working on:My current simple passive cashflow number is $6-7k/month. My goal is $12k/month. Twice that amount would open up new opportunities. My ideal day would involve some sort of time outside, exercise, a good cup of coffee, involvement with friends and community, self-development like reading books, and plenty of time with my husband and son. We’d go on quarterly vacations and also monthly mini-vacations hiking and camping near our home. I also would probably keep working on real estate!7) Something that you have recently done or thought about “burning your cash” on for time savings or an improvement in quality of life:Right now I’ve been focused on using my cash to buy great real estate investments. If I had to splurge on something, it probably would be a new car. My 2004 Saturn is starting to show age! Typically though, I’ve mostly spent my extra cash on things like vacations where the memories will last far longer than some new gadget.8) Something that you changed your mind on?Our ego often gets in the way of greatness. One lesson I’ve learned over the years is that sometimes, it’s okay not to have the nicest property on the block. Especially when it comes to rental property. There are plenty of people out there who need a safe, clean, functional place to live. We also have Section 8 tenants at some of our properties, and while I was very apprehensive about it at first, there are definite advantages. Also, these types of properties typically provide much better cash flow than the newer “Class A” buildings out there.9) Tony Robbins identifies two large concepts that we are continually struggling to gain perfection at: #1-Art of Fulfillment and #2-Science of Achievement. If you died tomorrow and I were to email this to your kids a couple decades later… this is what they would hear:a) What is your secret/hack for the "Science of Achievement?" Any secret habits to share? Morning or Nighttime ritual?:I think the “Science of Achievement” for me can be summed up in one word - Perseverance. For me, I think I’ve been successful because I refuse to give up. Whether it was a tough homework assignment, a seemingly impossible-to-meet deadline, or navigating my first real estate deal, I found that if I kept at it long enough, the impossible became possible.b) What is your secret/hack for the "Art of Fulfillment?" How you do contribute back?:For me, the most fulfilling parts of the day is the time I spend with my husband and our 2-year-old son. I’m fulfilled by having a multi-dimensional life where I love working on my business and real estate, I love exploring the Colorado outdoors, and I love spending lots of time with my family.10) Anything we missed and contact info if you would like anyone to get a hold of you. URL?You can reach me at www.regencyinvestmentgroup.com through the Contact form, or just email me at sarah@regencyinvestmentgroup.com.Check out my Free Resources Below:1) If you are an accredited investor and afraid of the impending market correction?Get out the stock market and into the Simple Passive Cashflow Hedge Fund!More info: www.SimplePassiveCashflow.com/fund 2) Join a Social Club:Seattle Social ClubHawaii Social ClubPortland Social ClubBay Area Social ClubSo Cal Social ClubEast Coast Social ClubCentral USA Social Club 3) Subscribe to my podcast: Google Android Phones | Apple iPhone | Youtube 4) Once you have gone through the majority of podcasts feel free to sign up for a chat:20 Minute Chat with Lane 5) Make sure you sign up for my Hui Deal Pipeline Club to get sent the deals I come across. 6) I am partnered with a start-up Virtual Assistant firm out in the Philippines. Shoot me an email Lane@simplepassivecashflow.com if you want to try them out.More info: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4gFjCt6Knc1U3YwYjdZRnYzN1k 7) Please leave a review for the podcast! 8) Coaching Program to get you to your first rental in 90 days! 9) And finally... if you are just getting started Sign-up for Free access to the 10 Module Course: 10) Summary of every Simple Passive Cashflow Podcast See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The real secret to converting with funnels… Today’s episode is part 3 of a 3 part series of Russell speaking at a $100k event where he taught about the psychology of funnels. Here are some of the things you will hear in part 3: Some tips and tricks when it comes to building funnels. What the cardinal rule of upsells is and some of the things that will help convert an upsell. He also gives some cool tips for using Facebook Live. So listen below to find out how to make your funnels awesome and successful. ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson:               All right, so now we’re going to … Cause now, like everyone … I’m the funnel guy, so let’s talk about funnels, right? Now that we’ve got the foundation stuff out of the way, so then it comes to how do we build the funnel? I lost … There’s the lid. For me, the funnel … Everyone thinks there’s some magic. I have people all the time like, “Hey Russell. Do you have an MLM funnel you can give me, so I can grow my MLM?” I have a funnel that’s worked for someone I can give you. “Hey, I’m doing this.” I give them the book funnel. I was snickering yesterday. Everyone’s like, “I need your book funnel. [inaudible 00:46:27] book funnel to work.” It’s like, well kind of. Y’all have the funnel now. That’s the framework. What makes it work is this stuff we talked about, right? The pieces don’t change. My funnels are not complicated If you look at my funnels versus, I have friends who like to brag about the complexity of their funnels. They’re insane. My funnels are so simple. They’re usually four or five pages and that’s it. It’s, very simple. My thing, I think … In fact, I was at a Infusion Soft thingy and I was watching these guys and they had all of their … These guys were building all of these funnels that had like a billion different segments and all this stuff. You know those Infusion Soft charts, that show all the thing … I was just sick to my stomach. I’m like, “Guh.” They’re like, “Yeah, well if they click here, then it takes them this sequence. If they don’t, they take them to here and then if they’ve done this thing for three days and they haven’t done this and then they go here and …” All this stuff and I was just like … They have a billion different branches. I’m looking at that, I’m like, “You know the problem with that, is I have no idea what the crap to fix if something’s broken. There’s so may things. I want five or six variables max I want my cost per ad, I want my landing page conversion, I want my sales thingy. I want four or five things and I’m going to go and spend a thousand bucks driving ads. I’m going to stop and look at it and be like, “Okay, cool. It’s one of these five things that’s broken. Maybe two of them. Let’s fix just those.” You’ve got a thing that’s got 8,000 sequences. I can not make it better. What’s more important, is become better at selling. Me getting better at telling a story is better than 8.000 segmentations of lists. I’ll make way more money by becoming better at telling my story, than I ever will from the third, the guy that didn’t click on email 13, send him this one instead and then send this one at two in the morning and then. Holy crap. Just sell yourself better and that’s worth a million times more than that, right? I make them simple. All my … Everyone’s cheering back here, “Yay, simple funnels.” My stuff’s all very, very, very simple, but I’ve become a master at understanding this. The opportunity switch to the opportunity stack. I’m just going to talk about a book funnel, but this could be any funnel. Does not matter. The first thing I’m looking at is that is, what is the opportunity switch. There’s going to be a video of me telling a story about the opportunity switch. With my book funnel, I’m telling a story about my book, my epiphany story about how I had an opportunity switch and how this book is going to give you that same thing as well. Right? That’s the key. That’s the magic. If I’m doing a webinar, what am I doing? Telling a story about my opportunity switch, tell the epiphany story. They have the same epiphany, they’re sold. I don’t have to sell them anymore. If I’m selling supplements, same thing. Tell them the story, how did my epiphany pitch. It doesn’t matter what it is. That’s the key, is I’m telling a really good story about how I had my epiphany, and if I do the job right, they’ll have the same epiphany and then they’ll buy the first product. From there, it’s coming and the biggest thing most marketers do, when they start creating their upsale, downsale sequences is like, “Okay, what else do we have on the shelf we can sell them? Okay, they bought my book. Let’s sell them, I don’t know, some other random thing.” Or, they bought the book. Let me sell them more of that same kind of thing. Now, in supplement world, this is like the default. E-commerce/supplements, it’s kind of like remember A-E-I-O-U and sometimes I and W, or E and W or whatever that is. There’s two times this rule breaks. In supplements and e-commerce, whatever I sell on the first phase, if I sell supplements, I sell three bottles, my upsell’s always six bottles of the exact same crap. If I sell e-commerce, we just did a campaign for Fiber Fix. Three Fiber Fix, I’m upselling a crap ton more Fiber Fix. It’s e-commerce and supplements, you sell more of the same thing on the next page. Only time you do that. In information products, that will kill you. First time I really got this, it was when we launched our 108 Split Test book, which was kind of ironic, because the whole book’s about split test. We launched this book and the landing page converted and non of the upsells did and I was so pissed. I’m like. “Why is this not working?” I retweaked this offer probably 12 times. I changed the video, changed the pitch, changed the offer, changed the thing, the thing, the thing. I’m like, “Why is nobody buying this crap?” The main thing I was selling was, they bought a book on split tests, and my upsell was this whole course on split testing. I’m like, “This is all the cool stuff you need. You told me you wanted split testing. I’m selling you more split testing. Why are you not buying that?” I had one of my friends, who went to my funnel and bought it and he texted me. He’s like, he said, “Hey man. Cool book. Thanks for the book.” Then he’s like, “I bet your upsell is not converting.” I was like … I didn’t tell anyone, cause the conversion, that’s my thing. Like, “Why would you say that?” He’s like, “Ah, I can just tell.” I’m like, “Well, I’m just curious. Why would you assume that?” Anyway, he shot … it’s Tim Erway, if any of you guys who know him. He shot me this message, he’s like, “Dude, cause you did the cardinal fail of upsales.” I was like, “All right. Yeah. What was the cardinal rule again?” He told me, he said, “When somebody buys your first product …” Think about it. Let’s say it’s My Gear, The Truth About Abs, right? I want abs so bad, right. I buy Truth About Abs. My mind, as a consumer, I’m like, “I’ve got abs. That itch has been scratched.” And I’m like, “Ah sweet, I got abs. Whew.” Then here it’s like, “Hey, I’m going to give you workout videos, so you can get abs.” Like, “Dude, I already got abs. I just bought them. They’re … It’s done. My itch has been scratched.” He’s like, “When people buy your split test book, in their mind, that itch has been scratched. It’s done. Nothing you do will get people to buy more of that.” I was like, “But they raised their hand as people interested in split tests.” Nope, that itch has been scratched. He’s like, “You’ve got to look at, you just did an opportunity switch. What is the next thing they need to be more successful with that? What’s the stack? What’s the next logical thing?” I was like, for me I was like, “Well, if they scratched their itch on conversion, conversion’s awesome, but they’re only coming to the website and then they’re kind of screwed, right?’ For me, it was traffic was the next thing. We shifted that to a what’s the opportunity stack. Now you know how to make your pages convert, now let’s get people to actually show up. Switched it and stacked the next opportunity. Boom. I was like, “Crap, that was so easy.” Now everyone in my funnel’s [inaudible 00:52:17] the psychology of, okay. First lead is the switch. Now we’ve got them believing … This is why I love free book offers. Why I like low end things, because the lower the barriers initially … All I have to get them to do is to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I’m going to buy your book.” By saying that, they’ve subconsciously sold themselves on like, “I have now switched off on the opportunity. This is now my future. I’m a guy who has six pack abs.” They’ve made that switch. You know, as soon as you pull a credit card out of your wallet, you are voting. That’s why, we don’t do customer service and crap, cause I don’t care. We get people to vote with their credit card, cause that’s the only thing I actually believe. Every time we do focus groups and all that kind of crap, people give you whatever … I only care about people voting with their credit card. As soon as they pull a credit card out of their wallet, they have voted that this is the opportunity that they are buying in to. They’re done. The next thing is just like, “Okay, you’ve already bought in to this now.” That’s why I like making this first opportunity as low barrier, as easy, because as soon as I get them to sell, subconsciously they’re 100% in. Now the stacks become easy. Like, “Hey, you got this. Now you need this.” People always ask me, “Well how many upsells should I have? What should be the price points on it? Duh, duh, duh, duh.” It has nothing to do with price points, it has nothing to do … None of that crap matters. People are like, “Well, should I go from free to 97 to 290. What’s the …” Everyone worries about that. It has nothing to do with that. It has 100% to do with, what’s the next logical thing this customer needs to have success in the new opportunity I just gave them? This might be a $25,000 offer, if it makes sense. If that’s the next logical thing that they need, or it might be $37. Price point does not matter. It’s the logical sequencing of the offers that is the key. That’s what makes any funnel work, is the logical sequencing of offers. Speaker 10:        May I ask a question? Russell Brunson:               Yes. Speaker 10:        With the opportunity switch, is that more emotional and then the opportunity stack is more logical? Russell Brunson:               I don’t think anything logical sells. [inaudible 00:54:11] why I think logically, there’s still emotion. Speaker 10:        Well you know, you’ve got this … You’ve got emotion and logic here. Is that [inaudible 00:54:18] the epiphany bridge? Russell Brunson:               Yes. Yes, sorry. Yeah, so the emotional part’s the [inaudible 00:54:28], the logical part … Logical’s like that how they explain to their wife [inaudible 00:54:33] buy something for 25,000, $100,000. How do I explain to my wife like, “Yeah. I spent a hundred grand to go on this thing, because it’s going to be really good for my … No, I just want to hang out with me and Joe and everyone.” Right? We emotionally get bought in, but I’m still always selling from emotion. I’ll talk about logical, the logical justifications in the videos and stuff like that. It’s still emotional. Speaker 10:        [inaudible 00:54:54] emotional [inaudible 00:54:55] stack. Russell Brunson:               Yeah, I think so. Speaker 10:        How do you extend that story, that epiphany story [crosstalk 00:54:59]. Russell Brunson:               New story. New story. Speaker 10:        It’s a new story? Russell Brunson:               Yeah, so it’s like here’s split testing. Like, cool. Let me tell you a story. After I got … I’m sending this book out to you in the mail. You guys are going to go crazy for it, cause it’s going to show you split testing. For me, when I started to get in to split testing, I was really excited, but the problem was, I didn’t really have traffic coming to my website. I was doing a split test, like three people come. You can’t actually … It doesn’t help.” I start going in to the whole story. Speaker 10:        A new epiphany. Russell Brunson:               Yes. Speaker 10:        You’re sharing. Russell Brunson:               Yeah. Speaker 10:        Okay. Gotcha. Russell Brunson:               Sometimes multiple epiphanies. I’m telling as many stories as I need, to get that idea across. Speaker 10:        Okay. Russell Brunson:               How many stories do you think I’ve told in the last hour, so far? Speaker 10:        A lot. Russell Brunson:               Anyway. The more, the merrier. It’s not like, what’s my one epiphany bridge story. Usually, it can be multiple. Any time I explain something that’s confusing, I’ve got to step back again, “Well, it’s kind of like millions of motivational speakers running through your blood. That’s what ketones are.” Okay, and I keep moving forward. Okay, so like I said, some upsells, there’s one thing, cause that’s the only logical thing they have. Some upsells, there’s two. Some upsells, I have one thing and I have a downsell. It matters less to me what it is and more tome just, what makes sense for this customer that’s on this path? I remember reading the Emyth 12 years ago, and one of the initial things he talked about is the process of somebody walks in to a store. Last week, my wife wanted to go to the mall, cause we were going on a cruise in two days and she wanted to get some new clothes. I hate going to the mall, but I love GNC. That’s my … I love supplements. I take more supplements than I should, every day. I love it, right? I go to GNC and, the thing I hate about GNC though … How many of you has been in to a GNC? What happens as soon as you walk in? They just pounce on you, it’s like, “Ahh [inaudible 00:56:30]” I hate it, so I take a breath like, “Okay.” I walk through the door and within like one step, the girl comes out, “oh, blah blah.” I’m just like going through this pain like, “What are you looking for? What do you want? What do you need?” I’m like, “I just want to look at supplements. Leave me alone.” Then it’s like finally, that horrible pain’s gone and she leaves me. Okay. I can start looking, right? I’m remembering the E-myth and thinking about, I love GNC but I always have this pain going in, because the process is so weird. I start looking at … I became obsessed with this. Everywhere I go, it drives my wife nuts. We’re going through anything and the way a waiter pitches me, depends on what I’ll buy and what I’ll tip them. I want to get sold. I’m obsessed with the process of everything, from offline funnels to online funnels to everything that’s happening. For me, I’m just looking at that like, “Imagine that you’re your customer, okay, and they come here. What’s going to capture them, like a really good video. You’re going to cut out the techno babble. You’re going to tell a really good story, that’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be visually good, it’s not going to be me against a white wall, trying to be boring. I’m going to find a good background and make it look visually stimulating, so it’s cool. I’m going to tell a story that captivates them and make then=m an offer that’s so irresistible. It’s a new opportunity that’s going to change their life, and that’s what we do here.” Then I’m like, “Okay, they bought the book.” How can I serve them the best? What’s the next thing I can do to serve this person the most? It should be this. Do I have a product that does that? No, and that’s what I need to make them. I need to make a product that does that, cause it’s all about, how do we serve our people at the highest level. That’s more important than “I’ve got a whole bunch of products. What do I plug in and where do they go and should this be the upsell?” No, think about the process. If you’re walking in to GNC, if was walking in to GNC, I would change the whole process to like, “Hey, welcome to GNC. Here’s a free power bar. Let me know if you need anything.” I’d have been like “Huh.” Eating a power bar, I’d buy four times as much stuff. I’d be going through things. I would just be focusing on that customer journey, what’s happening through the process. For you guys, that’s the way to think through this. Think like, someone buys this like, “Oh man. It’s kind of expensive and we ship them out DVDs and all this stuff.” Maybe some people don’t want DVDs. Maybe they don’t have a DVD player. Maybe I’ll downsell them. Maybe they just want a digital version. Maybe that would be my downsell, is a digital version, cause that’s probably what they’d want. I’m looking logically, like what makes the most sense to them. If you can craft that, that’s the magic. That’s how you get a funnel that converts and how you make it work awesome. Speaker 10:        On that first page, how long generally … Do you have a time frame of the ideal video length? Three minutes, 45 minutes. Russell Brunson:               This is what … Speaker 10:        Or does size really matter? Russell Brunson:               One of my professors told me one time, he’s like, “It needs to be … it’s like a girl’s skirt. It needs to be long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to still be interesting.” That’s my gauge I my mind, always. If it’s getting boring and long, then I … But I don’t have a timeline. How long does it take me, take the story, where it’s still engaging? It might be three minutes, it might be 20 minutes. If I tell a good story, people will sit there. That’s more important. Yeah. There is a duration to the price of the thing I’m selling and how long it is. If it’s a free book offer, I don’t have to do a lot to get people to take that, but still need to get them to buy in to this, or else the upsells won’t convert. A lot of times you see people book offers, “Get my free book. It’s amazing. You’re going to love it. It’s free. Ahh.” That may work good for getting people to buy initially, but it kills you everything back here, cause they’re not bought in to the opportunity switch. If you can get them to buy the opportunity switch, then everything else increases, from the rest of it on. Any other questions about that stuff at all? Cool. Then the last piece of this … Oh yeah. Speaker 11:        Where does the traffic primarily come from? Russell Brunson:               Cool. All right. The last piece of this. Traffic all over the place, but I want to show you guys what’s working the best for us right now. On the last page right here. This is Anthony DeClemente. He is one of my buddies. He owns this company, biohacking stuff. We started, we’re starting an online reality show called Funnel Hacker TV, just cause we want to … Without people … I wish we had like five hours, I could talk about more of this. For our customers, to build the whole culture, the biggest thing that we got to do is believe. Get these guys to believe in this right here. What I do, I do a lot of stuff to show belief. Friday we do a show called the Friday Funnel show, where I’m building an entire funnel in 30 minutes and I show them over and over and over again that I drink my own Kool-Aid. That I’m actually doing this. It’s like the biggest thing for sales we’ve ever done. We do, we built this reality show, where basically each week, we pick an entrepreneur that’s got a really cool product and we take them, figure out the product, the offers, build the thing and launch it. He’s episode number one that’s coming out. He had no list, no following, switching markets to a whole completely different thing, but he’s just really good at what he did. We had him write a book. This whole campaign went from zero. I’m saying, you don’t have to have a big following for this to work. This went from zero. In the last six weeks, we sold 8,000 copies of his book. He just finished his very first biohacking week in Chicago, had a whole bunch of people pay a crap ton of money to come out there and go through the experience and this whole business went from zero to it’ll do a couple million bucks, yeah number one. All just from this. No other traffic source except for this. As you start going further down the cold, it’s different, but for most people, you can build really good off of this. Facebook live, Facebook loves us right now. They are wanting all of us to do it, so what we do, and I’ll kind of give you Anthony for example. He’s got a book funnel. Some questions like what’s the message? What’s the best Facebook ad? I don’t know. I have no idea what message is going to be right. Everyone responds to different things. What, Anthony I said, “First thing he has to do is, every single day you have to do a Facebook live video on a different topic. Every single day, for the rest of your life.” He’s like, “But I don’t know if I have enough ideas.” I don’t care. Every single day for the rest of your life. That’s your only job, is to make a Facebook live video. What he did was he made a first Facebook live video and I was like, “It’s biohacking. Do the weird crap. Get things with lasers up your nose and all sorts of weird stuff and that’ll be your Facebook live.” Then he did that and nobody cared. We did another one, and nobody cared. Then we did another one. We found out that about one out of 10 does what we call force virals. One out of 10, and what’s weird is, it’s usually the message that I think is the stupidest message ever. The first video we had that went force viral, the title of it was How to Biohack Your Vegetables. It was like, “Hey.” He’s cooking, he’s like, “What you do is you put butter in your vegetables and it’s biohacked now.” It got like two or three million views and sold hundreds and hundreds of copies of the book. I was like, I thought the cools ones with the lasers in his eyes and ears would be the cool thing, but no. It’s never what you think. We build a marketing campaign, we focus on one thing and it’s the wrong one, it’s like no. Do a Facebook live every single day for the rest of your life, on a different message and you’ll find what the market actually cares about. What things they do. It’s a consistency thing. Over and over and over again. Here’s a couple things on Anthony’s, just printed out a guide to help you guys, cause there was a lot of questions on it yesterday. The main thing is again, profile picture has a huge thing to do with people actually being part of it. The name should not be a company. People do not want to engage in companies and they do not want to share things from companies, they want to engage with you, the attractive character. The ult leader. All the headlines are super easy. They’re things that are shareable, so it’s not too complex. It’s like, ,”Hey cool, how to biohack your vegetable. How to …” What was this one? “How to biohack, detox and get a flatter midsection.” There’s a simple call to action with the URL that’s not clickfunnels.com/1234/ … It’s something that’s also benefit driven, like biohackers guide. It’s like, “Oh cool. There’s the guide. Speaker 12:        Do you boost these or no? Russell Brunson:               Yeah, I’ll talk about that in a sec. Speaker 12:        And you can boost with a URL? You can do that? Okay Russell Brunson:               Yep. I’ll talk about kind of that strategy here in a second. Can the video structure, typically this is the structure. They’re usually three to five minute videos. The first 15 seconds is like, “Hey. I’m Anthony DeClemente.” Then, if you have a cold like me, so I’m, “Hey, I’m Russell Brunson. My fellow funnel hackers, I want to talk to you about whatever.” Calling them out. Then the next thing is, this is … We ask people to share like, “Hey, if you like this video, at the end of it if you can please share it, that way I know if you like this content, and I’ll make more like this. If you don’t like it, don’t share it and I just won’t make any more like this.” Some people are like, that’s how they’re voting if they like it, by sharing. Which is huge. The first 15 seconds, we tell them to share it if they like it, we ask them to do a favor like, “Hey, if you thought this was awesome, share it. That way I know.” Huge thing. Then, four minutes of teaching. I would say teaching/telling epiphany bridge stories is more important. Telling a good story. The end of it, a call to action to whatever it is your front end things is. “Go get my free books.” Anthony, every single day, he’s showing one biohack, and then “Hey, go get my book Biohackersguide. Com.” Then down here, the very first post … As soon as he starts a video … When you first do a video , first it goes out to your fan page, right? Anthony has zero people on his fan page, the first probably hundred videos, right? Nobody was there. He just did it, and then as soon as it’s done, then what our guys will do, they’ll come in the very first post. We try to post the link to the actual offer, so that everyone sees that initially. It’s pulls in a picture of the product, stuff like that. Somebody manually is adding that in. Now, because he’s got more of a following, as soon as he starts a thing, someone goes in and posts it really quick as the first comment, so it sticks there, then it goes live. What we do is typically, for each of these videos it goes live, we put about five bucks behind it, just to see what’s going to happen. If you’ve got more of an audience initially, you don’t put money behind it. If you have zero audience initially, you put about five to 10 bucks behind it, just to see which ones get some traction. Then as soon as one thing gets traction, the way that we judge traction is right here, is the ration. It’s the 1% share to view ratio. How many people viewed it and how many people shared it? As soon as you get 1% share/view, we call that internally it’s a force to viral video, which means I can spend as much money as I want and it’s going to go viral and it’s going to make us a bunch of money. About one out of 10 hit that number, and then we dump as much money as we want or can or need to behind that and it’ll just kind of blow up. For me, this is … the biggest thing I can give you guys is this. Speaker 12:        Is the 1% based off of views? Russell Brunson:               It’s the ratio of views to shares. Speaker 12:        Views to shares. Russell Brunson:               This video’s got 1.4 million views. Its got 10,000 shares, so it’s 1%. Speaker 12:        [inaudible 01:06:19] Russell Brunson:               Huh? Speaker 12:        [inaudible 01:06:23] Russell Brunson:               We’re not mathematicians, we’re marketers. You are definitely way smarter than me. It looks like one to me. It’s a ball park. If it’s close, we’re going to blow it up. That’s kind of about what we’re looking at. Then we can promote it. What’s cool about this, if you think about everything we talked about earlier, right? We talked about traffic temperature up here, right? What’s cool about these videos is that, every video, you’re learning what people respond to and what they don’t respond to. We realize like, “Wow, they actually care about biohacking vegetables. Let’s do more things like that, cause they shared it.” You’re able to speak to different times. You can speak sometimes in techno babble and you’re going to boost … It may not do as good, but you’re going to boost it to different audience. For me, I might do a Facebook live talking about funnels for network marketers and I do it and nobody on my page cares, but now that video, that ad’s done and my guy will blow up all the network marketing companies, and then boom. We get all the network marketers to come underneath us. I might do one, funnels for real estate agents. Funnels for … I’m just, it’s like carving out little pieces of the market you can then target differently. It also helps you figure out what people actually care about, what they’re listening to, what they click on, what they share. As of right now, this is such a big piece of our strategies, because we’re learning so much so fast. I mean, I could write a thousand surveys and not get the same data we get from just doing a daily video, every single day, consistently, consistently, consistently doing it. Russell Brunson:               From the funnel side, those are the keys you guys, and hopefully that helps a lot. Speaker 16:        [inaudible 01:10:05] Russell Brunson:               Am I allowed to celebrate something? Just kidding. We do an event once a year, that’s … Tony Robbins is our key note this year and it’s basically me on stage, with a bunch of our … [inaudible 01:10:18] difference. Me on stage and then we’ve got people that are click funnels members who are doing it in different markets. We got a really cool couple, Brandon and Kayla. They’re in the fitness industry. They sell $149 product. All they do is Facebook lives. In fact, they do an entire webinar pitch on Facebook live and they’ll do … During a live Facebook live, they do 150,000, 200,000 dollars live on it, and they boost it afterwards and do five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars. I’ve done … Jason talks about webinars later today. Speaker 17:        That’s incredible. Russell Brunson:               Doing, if you do a whole bunch of these viral videos like this on your Facebook live, and you’re building an audience and stuff’s coming that’s really, really good, then you come in and you do your entire webinar. I’ve done three Facebook lives that were me doing my entire webinar live and in front of everyone, just talking. Al of it over a quarter million dollars in sales, cause it’s just engagement and live and it’s really fun. A lot of cool ways you can use that. Anyway. I hope that helps you guys and … Speaker 18:        That’s awesome. That was good. Thank you.

Neil Patel is an online celebrity and entrepreneur. He has been a prolific blogger on QuickSprout and the KISSmetrics blog since 2006. He has contributed to Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, Mashable, Business Insider, SEOmoz, and Geekwire. He has also mentored and advised endless numbers of entrepreneurs over the years, including myself. Neil is a true Craftsman Founder of multiple companies: ACS (SEO), Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics which all have generated many millions of dollars a year in revenue. I am lucky to call him a friend and thrilled Here is just the audio for those who are interested in listening: iTunes Stitcher RSS Feed Show Notes Your startups, KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg both use data to tell you stories of how people use your websites. Why is that important? When people build websites, they tend to focus on traffic. A million visitors a month to your site doesn’t guarantee success if those visitors don’t convert into customers. Understanding the entire story path of your users from where they come from to when they buy is critical for long-term success. Many decisions are gut instincts and opinions, do you have any examples of how measuring data lead to surprising results? Yes. It is “common knowledge” that you need to reduce friction to get people to sign up, therefore you are supposed to minimize the things you ask a person to tell you up front. For example, you usually don’t ask for the person’s URL during signup. But using data, we found that asking for their URL first actually INCREASES SIGNUPS. How did you discover this? Through data–Using Google Analytics, KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg Qualitative feedback–SurveyMonkey, Qualaroo, Promoter.io Peers–We saw other smart people we know trying these ideas How does thinking like your customer help you make more sales? Think of a website as a first date. If someone lands on your site, let’s get married is: give me your email, password and credit card… that’s a really tough sell. But if you say: Good to meet you, what’s your name or URL? You start building a relationship with your audience which will make it easier for deeper engagements with your customers. How can you use data to piece together the stories about how customers find out about you? Do it in bite sizes. Figure out and optimize just one part of the story at a time. Find where you have the most drop-off to start with. For example, focus just on your homepage. Then focus on your checkout pages. Do it piece by piece. What do you do when you don’t know what needs to change?Survey readers (using Qualaroo or Promoter.io) and ask them “what else would they like to see on this page?” Then look for commonalities. Let your visitors tell you where you are wrong. What are the top 3 most common mistakes that you see startup founders make? Founders don’t execute fast enough. They want to create the best product or over-thinking things rather than testing and measuring results. Making decisions based on what they want vs. the data. They end up building products nobody wants to use or pay for. They don’t think about marketing. The best product in the world still needs to be marketed. People think they can’t start marketing until they finish the product or feature. These are just excuses and the excuses never ends. You will always come up with more reasons to not start marketing yet. The product does not need to be done to start marketing it. You are an expert on online marketing. How can people attract more attention to what they are doing? SEO. Google can drive a ton of traffic to your site. Read The Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Then read The Advanced Guide to SEO. Then focus on link building. Read The Advanced Guide to Link Building and The Backlinko Blog. Content Marketing. Educate people. If you don’t have time to create your own blog, guest post on other people’s blogs. Buffer did this on Forbes and Entrepreneur blog. Read Copyblogger and ProBlogger to learn how to blog effectively. Finally, read The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing. Social Media. To figure out social media, read The Social Media Examiner. Facebook is the second most popular site on the Internet (after Google) so figure it out. Start from wherever you are and with whatever skill level you are, no matter how bad you think you are. The only way to get better is by practicing and doing things. If you tell yourself that you are bad at marketing or sales or whatever, and you let that be an excuse for ignoring it, you are handicapping yourself unnecessarily. What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received about starting a company? Go out there and generate revenue as quickly as possible. It sounds silly and simple, but most people think they need a product before they start charging people. Locking in customers before your product is done really helps change the perception of your business from a consumer or investor standpoint. Without revenue you give up control of your future. How has marketing changed in the last few years for startups? Gone from just SEO and paid acquisition to becoming much more creative. Engineers have become much more involved in marketing. Your product can be involved in marketing. Like Dropbox’s invite people to get free credit.